Oracle to buy Sun. Should we look for a new database?

Sun Microsystems was on the block for a while now. Though there were lot of hopefuls IBM was the first to bid for Sun. The talks fell apart. Oracle offered a higher price and will be buying Sun Microsystems for $7.4 bn. Sun and Oracle make a great pair and looks like the perfect marriage.

BEA (weblogic server), PeopleSoft and Siebel are three popular product based acquisitions by Oracle till date. Sun is a more profitable acquisition than all of the 3 combined. iFlex, Primavera and Hyperion are other notable Oracle acquisitions.

What will happen to mySQL? mySQL is the open source database in Sun’s stable. Oracle might be more interested in the database than it is interested in Java. Any which way, Oracle got java, mySql and the hardware. While the Java and hardware do not pose any problem, Oracle owning mySQL does pose a lot of problems.

The little database is free, open source and ubiquitous. It is so wide spread that many even don’t know that they use the database. It boasts of 11 million installations so far. Many blogs which run WordPress and other platforms run on mySql. While Oracle would not jeopardize any of the free things we enjoy but it gives that extra sense of insecurity when we hear the news. The question which frequents my mind is “What if it does?”

Sun has a Unix operating system in Solaris. Solaris works well with Oracle’s’ suite of products. What this means is Oracle will have tough time promoting Sun’s open source initiatives like Linux and mySQL. Besides, these initiatives are directly competing with Oracle’s core products.

Good news for Oracle, good news for Sun but not so good news for IBM and the rest of the party. But, not an encouraging news to the open source community.

Overall, good news for the IT industry as it would foster competition between Oracle, HP and IBM.